Step 346

I am in the world to work.

YOU ARE IN THE WORLD TO WORK. Work is what you want to do. Work is why you have come. But what is this work that we speak of? Is it your current employment, which you resist and have difficulty with? Is it the many tasks that you think are your own and that you assign to yourself? Your true work may be expressed in any of these activities, but it is truly greater. It will be your happiness and your fulfillment to carry out each step of your true work. Your true work in the world is to discover your Knowledge and allow it to express itself through you. Your true work in the world is to respond to your specific calling, which engages you with certain people in certain ways so that you may fulfill your individual destiny in the world.

THIS IS YOUR WORK. Do not think at this moment that you can understand what this work is and do not try to give it definition beyond what we have given you. It is all right not to know fully what this means. It is all right to apprehend the mystery of your life without attempting to make it concrete.

YOU ARE IN THE WORLD TO WORK. Therefore, apply yourself so that your application may reveal to you the source of your purpose, meaning and direction. It is through your work and meaningful activity that you will experience your value—the value of your individual life and the assurance of your true destiny. Your true work guarantees you all things of value and provides you escape from all things that conceal you and render you helpless and miserable.

REMIND YOURSELF OF TODAY’S IDEA upon the hour. In your two deeper practices, once again engage your mind actively in considering today’s idea. Consider how you view work itself and all of your associations with work. Review how you have responded to work in the past—your desire to work, your ambivalence concerning work and your resistance to work. Recognize how all desire to escape work has really been a desire to discover Knowledge. Realize that Knowledge will engage you with work with new purpose, new meaning and new direction. Examine your thoughts. You must understand your thoughts, for they are still very effective in influencing your perception and your understanding. When you can become objective with your own mind, you will be able to allow Knowledge to shine upon it, and you will be able to use the power of decision to prepare yourself and to work with the content of your mind. This is effective within your range of participation, for it is not given you to determine the purpose, the meaning or the direction of Knowledge, but to become the recipient of Knowledge, to experience Knowledge and to allow Knowledge to express itself through you.

THUS, IN YOUR TWO LONGER PRACTICE PERIODS engage your mind actively. Concentrate on this one idea. Recognize all the thoughts and feelings that are associated with it. In the last portion of each long practice period, allow all thoughts to leave you. Re-enter stillness and receptivity so that you may come to know. Knowledge does not require your thinking when you are experiencing Knowledge itself, for all thinking is a replacement for Knowledge. Yet, Knowledge will direct all your thinking to serve a greater purpose.